Bad patents and abuse of
the patent system hurt small businesses, innovators and the
American economy.Help us support Patent
Reform in Congress.
Support HR 9 and The PATENT Act!

We were sued for infringement of three weak and overly broad
patents that never should have been issued. It took ten months and
drained $100,000 from our small business to defend against
the outrageous allegations. In the end, a Federal Judge
ruled in our favor and declared the three bad patents invalid.
We won our case, but at a crippling legal expense. Now we
take our fight to Congress to support comprehensive patent
reform to break the financial model which has mad patent abuse
profitable over the last decade.

A bit of background on the case:

An individual filed received the first
of three vague and overly broad patents related to event photography
starting in 2006. He immediately turned those
patents into tools of financial intimidation against
small businesses across the country. These
patents failed for a number of different reasons to meet the requirements
for patent protection by the US Government, but it didn't
matter. One after another, businesses were bullied
into paying absurd "license fees" for processes they had
developed themselves. When confronted with the high
costs of legal defense, one by one, they each agreed
to pay the fees demanded. Like the others, Capstone had
done nothing wrong and had never stolen anyone's intellectual
property. Nonetheless, we were sued on December
31, 2013 for infringement.

Despite severe financial pressure, we
decided not to settle and instead to fight these bad
patents. We spent ten months defending our
company and racking up tremendous legal expenses. We knew it would cost more, but
it was right to fight these patents and end this abuse
once and for all. Though many of our
larger competitors had taken the easy way out, we stood
up on behalf of the many hard-working and talented
photographers who suffer financially from these bad
patents.

On October 28, 2014 a Federal Judge ruled in our favor
and declared all three patents invalid. We are
grateful to be vindicated by the courts, as we knew we
would be. The photography business is now better
for these rulings, open to free and fair competition
that is the basis for our American economy.

Standing up for our industry comes at a tremendous cost.
Aside from the emotional distress and taking away time and
energy from growing our business, our legal expenses are around
$100,000. Externally Capstone may seem like a big company,
but we're a very small business consisting of the General
Manager and three hard-working employees plus a team of talented
contract photographers. We took a great risk to put this
much money into the case. We hope that many of
you who are on our side will
consider donating
to help us offset some of these expenses.